The Exaltation of Aft Mizzenmast
by DeLeine
Summary: Aft Mizzenmast is a sailor who becomes stranded in the wyld of the Great Western Ocean. Driven by his will to survive, he struggles to keep his sanity is this strange place, until the universe ultimately decides his fate.


The Whaler's Battle, "Control" - Aft Mizzenmast Origin Story

The Sea Huntress was three weeks west of The Neck when the dread fog emerged from the starlit ocean, and heralded the violent tempest which would doom the vessel and her crew. Through a hellish night they fought to keep the ship afloat, and by morning's calm they had lost the foremast, most of the cargo, five men, and the captain. With their prey lost, ship half-destroyed, and the storm lingering as an uncaring tuft of haze on the horizon, it was decided they would return to port. But they soon found that fate would not afford them that journey. For as they set their eastward course, the sails unfurled to reveal wind-shredded rags, and their prized nautical compass spun with wild indecisiveness. Some might have escaped in the attached whale boats, were they not also severely damaged by the walls of saltwater. So without leadership or means of navigation, the crew resolved to survive as long as they could, and prayed the gods found them worthy of pity.

However, as the first day progressed, they quickly realized how far beyond saving they really were. It began when the remaining harpooner pointed out that the ship was sitting deeper into the ocean than usual. There was no leak, and they had _lost_ weight during the previous night's storm, but there the ship was, floating almost two meters lower than normal. Then they saw how shallowly the clouds seemed to be hanging, and how they all moved in different directions. This, without even a breeze on the deck. Given these strange happenings, they could only conclude that over the course of the night, they had been blown to the edges of creation, into the wyld. During the initial panic several abandoned ship, choosing to die rather than live the horrific tales they had heard of the wyld. They leaped into the water and sank immediately, the ocean swallowing them like they were pebbles, without so much as a splash. The remaining nine began preparing for their final days.

They had enough food to last the crew three weeks, so who remained could sustain themselves for almost two months if they managed to collect rainwater, longer if they could catch fish. But some doubted they would make it so far, fearing they would be swallowed whole by a mountainous snail or fall off the edge of the world before the sun even set. Some might have _hoped_ for such a demise, and wondered if they would _want_ to live so long in this strange and maddening place. Most kept their concerns to themselves, though, to maintain sanity amongst the survivors. And by mid-morning they were organized. A lookout schedule was created, and work duties were assigned. Their years of whaling had made them self-sufficient and inclined towards working in groups. So given their situation, there was perhaps no one better suited to deal with what lay ahead, except maybe a military unit, or an exalted.

With no whales to hunt or carve, the day went by slowly, broken up by small bouts of measured and concerned conversation. Many spent the afternoon scanning the horizon, searching desperately for anything that might help them, while also fearing what they might find out there. Then noontime dragged on into the night, but dusk seemed a long ways off. It was obvious - when the sailors' stomachs grumbled for supper, and the sun still hung high above their heads - that days were longer in this strange land. Or perhaps they went through time slower. They agreed it didn't matter, so they ate, drank heavily, and went to sleep in their bunks while the sun beat down on the lookouts outside. They awoke to the sun setting, which glowed green over the horizon, and beheld the two lookouts, bloody and dead.

Aft stared uneasily at the bodies. They were lying underneath what remained of the mainmast, below the boom where they were previously seated. A few of the crew poked around, to try and find out what went wrong, and see what could be salvaged from their persons. A realization flashed through Aft's head. _Twenty of us at port, seven left. We're not doing well_. He focused on the bodies. They were Aris Marts and Fish Worthers, two stocky, veteran blubber cutters in their mid-thirties (Aft being 24). Aris's shirt was soaked in blood, and a knife protruded shallowly from his chest. Fish was crumpled awkwardly on the ground, his skull caved in on a large discarded tackle block. There must have been a struggle. Fish stabs Aris, they fall, Fish lands on his head, dies on impact. Someone held up Fish's belt, which had an empty sheath strapped to it. _At least it wasn't one of us._

Errant, the oldest of them, demanded the bodies be thrown overboard, claiming they were cursed with the madness of the wyld ocean. They all agreed, and formed teams which set to work tossing the corpses over the side. After a coordinated swing, Aris and Fish sank into the airy water, which was now shimmering and green from the dusking sun. Everyone watched the waters for a while, as if to make sure they didn't surface. When they didn't, the crew returned to the center of the ship to discuss a plan for surviving the night. But Aft lingered a bit and stared into the glowing horizon. He felt the dark sky creeping up behind him, over his back and along the hairs of his neck. It perverted his thoughts with an old memory. He saw an instance in his childhood, then another from several years ago. In this strange and foreign land, the familiar feeling was welcoming, even though he knew what it meant: _They won't survive the night._

They had formed a circle on the quarterdeck, which Aft joined shortly after he realized his own absence. He stood at least half a head shorter than his crewmates, and was considerably leaner. Being there with the heavier more powerful men made him uneasy, knowing what would soon transpire. They had the advantage of size, but he had planning. _And control._ The ocean around them might have been an unstoppable force of evil, but here, on this ship, in this circle, he knew exactly where he stood. Still, his heart raced, and his palms began sweating profusely. He feared what the night would bring. He feared he might fail this time. This would be cutting it close. He knew by the way they spoke and stood that no one else was anticipating the bloodshed. They talked about repairing the whale boats, getting rid of the weapons, starting a signal fire, and seeing if the water held life. Aft stared past them, into the emerging darkness along the horizon, and ran scenarios on how they would all die.

For almost an hour they discussed plans, as night settled over the ship. The sky looked much the same, but Aft thought he saw fewer stars than normal. The cool night air, despite tasting somewhat stale, had done well to keep their emotions at ease. Still, he felt the tension, and knew it would all break down when they began work. It had been agreed that repairing the whale boats was their best option. And once that was done, they would sail east, to rescue. But it was hopeless. Aft knew that. Maybe everyone else knew that too. Lucky for him, it was Zed who suggested the plan. Zed Land was a massive harpoonist, around Aft's age, but possessing many of the masculine features Aft lacked. When the madness set in, they would turn on Zed first for failing to help, and then for being the biggest threat. Once he was dead, Aft only needed to survive the rest. _I need a harpoon._

The repairs had been going on for a couple hours when the commotion started. Aft was deep in the hold with Sobriety, the cabin boy, looking for some sort of adhesive or binding that could tie planks together. The yelling came from the deck, and was barely audible, but it was enough for Aft to leap into his plan. He pushed passed Sobriety and raced topside, doing his best to muffle his footsteps. The harpoons were on a rack in the tackle room, but he had hid one under a set of stairs for easier access. _It's a gamble. Wait until they kill themselves, or wait until they form a group and gang up on me. I'll take my chances in the fray._ He snatched up the single flue harpoon and emerged into the open air. There were small torches burning for light, and the whale boat had been raised onto the quarterdeck, in irreparable pieces. He turned behind him and looked up at the poop deck. Zed Land was standing with his back to the stern, and three men surrounded him, yelling. They were armed with torches and gaffs. Zed held a massive wooden plank, wielding it like a warhammer.

But none of them saw Aft, so he ducked down immediately. _Perfect. I can listen from here, and when it's over, I adjust to the situation from there. He can't take them all on._ The fight began shortly after. The attackers sounded a meek battle cry, followed by a 'thunk' and a scream, followed shortly by a splash. Then Zed let out a guttural cry, probably from being stabbed with a gaff. There were more indistinct bludgeoning noises, then the loud 'thwack' of wood on wood. _He dropped the plank. Good._ The plank was followed by another drop, a body. Silence. Aft held his breath, and could hear labored breathing in between frantic mutterings. Then the words crescendoed into a high pitched scream for help, and stopped when the speaker crashed into the ocean. _New plan._

With a deep breath of cold, stale air, he emerged from the stairway and faced Zed. The harpooner had several burn marks on his bare chest and side of his face, a gaff sticking out of his shoulder, and a corpse sprawled out in front of him. He roughly removed the hook, releasing a spurt of blood which streaked down his torso in clean red ribbons. He spotted Aft, and his bloodshot eyes flared with rage. Aft raised the harpoon like a spear.

"Wait!" he pleaded. "They attacked you! I want to help!" he uttered with as much sincerity as he could muster. The adrenaline may have been shaking his vocal cords, but his stance and grip were firm. _Control. Control. Control._ His father's words echoed through him. _Stay focused._ Zed held the gaff in front of him and plodded towards the stairs of the poop deck, keeping eye contact. The man bared his yellow teeth. Aft checked his surroundings, looking for obstacles and means to use the environment. Being of the scrawnier sort, he was always told to use what he could find against his opponent. He wasn't sure what to look for, and didn't find anything useful, but he was content at least knowing where he couldn't step.

"Look Zed it's the water, the air! Come on man, calm down!" It only antagonized him. Zed rushed down the stairs screaming. Aft lunged at him with the harpoon, but Zed side-stepped. It grazed his waist, as he swung the gaff down, cutting Aft cleanly across his head, above his eye brows. He dropped the harpoon and tumbled onto the deck. Blood poured down into his eyes. He tried to think. He knew Zed would be on him in a second, three seconds if he stopped to pick up the harpoon. Aft rolled to the side, dodging nothing. _He's getting the harpoon._ In a second he wiped his sleeve across this face, feeling his forehead skin slide at the fresh gash. He could see now, and Zed had just picked up the weapon and was stepping towards him. _If I run he'll spear me like a dolphin._ He locked eyes with Zed. _Yes. If I keep eye contact, he won't break it._ Aft searched his peripherals, reached to his right, and found the base of a torch. Zed readied the harpoon to stab the supine man, when Aft threw the torch upwards, into his eyes.

It struck true. He yelled and staggered backwards, dropping the harpoon to cover his face. Aft immediately stood, took up the harpoon, spun it around, and drove it into Zed's stomach. They both paused. Aft stared down, at his white knuckles around the mahogany shaft, at the torch burning on the deck, and the small cloud of vapor flowing from his mouth. Then he looked up to see his victim, blood pouring from his mouth. He dropped the harpoon. The man it was stuck into dropped to his knees, then forward, which drove the spear further through his torso. He collapsed to his side, and coughed out a final splatter of blood.

Aft sat down next to the corpse, and removed his own shirt. He tied the sleeves around his open wound, letting the body of the shirt lay over his neck and back. He could feel the moisture of the blood pooling around his forehead. _It's done. I won. Don't- Keep control. Control._ He tried to slow his breathing, but his heart beat furiously, forcing him to gasp. He made to swallow but his dry throat only scratched itself. He stood again, hunched over, and surveyed his surroundings. The entire crew was now dead, except him and Sobriety. And then, with timid grace, Sobriety appeared in the stairway.

The boy couldn't be more than thirteen, and was a stout, blubbery mess of a child. The crew often called him the whale of the ship, joking that they would cut him open and take his oil if they couldn't find a proper pod at sea. He meekly stepped out onto the deck, then froze when he saw Aft and Zed. _Control._ Aft slowly staggered toward the frightened cabin boy. H _e's not a threat, but he's unpredictable. This ocean is driving them all insane. Who knows what he's capable of. What if he's not even real? He could be a sea witch or malicious demon._ Aft picked up the stained gaff. Blood began running into his left eye.

"He tried to kill me Soby!" he yelled, louder than expected. "He came at me with this!" He waved the hook wildly in the air. Sobriety stepped back fearfully. Aft continued. "This place is mad, you know. It's all mad. Out there!" He swung the hook out and pointed it towards the the ocean, then the sky. "But here-" he lowered his head and met Sobriety's gaze. "Here I have to keep control. Maintain order. Control." His chest heaved with heavy breaths, releasing a loudly whispered "Control." on the exhales. He raised the hook above the frightened boy's head, and drove it cleanly into his skull. It stuck, and Sobriety folded softly onto the ground. _Control_ …

He awoke just before sunup. Outside was a hazy orange glow on the horizon, and the stars were already in retreat. He was cold, but the netting he wrapped himself in had kept him warm enough. Upon recalling the night's events, he threw the net off and rushed up the stairs to confirm his fears. There was Zed, Karl, and Sobriety, pale and still, right where he left them. He forced a deep swallow, and set to work disposing of the bodies. First Soby, then Karl, then Zed were hauled overboard into the hungry sea, shadowed slightly by the ship. He turned and saw the sun rising above the ocean as a waving lump of gold, like an egg shifting elusively in a pan. He looked away, and swung his legs over the side of the deck, where he dumped the bodies. He looked down, and contemplated following his crewmates into the abyss. The ocean lapped quietly at the hull. It sounded like the grotesque crackling of lips and tongues smacking together. He could stop it all. _Control. Control his life to the very end._ He shook his head. "No" he told himself. He had to go on. No one was any danger to him now. He had to survive.

And he did just that. He survived on his own, eating food from the ship's supply, and drinking enough cider to keep him hydrated. He would get rainwater when he could, but it didn't rain often in the wyld sea. There were no fish to catch. If there were, they weren't biting. He subsided on stale bread, potatoes, jerky, apples, and a crate of vegetables which resembled cabbages. The captain's quarters had some wine and oranges that had gone rotten, but he couldn't complain. Overall there was enough to last him months, if the food didn't rot too quickly. And since the nights cooled the hold and during the day he could shut it up, it would be a while before he had to seriously worry about rot. He checked his injury regularly but it was healing nicely. The cut left a long, perfectly horizontal scar above his eyebrows, almost spanning the length of his forehead. Besides the maintenance things were very uneventful, so he slept most of the time. He couldn't adjust his sleeping schedule to what he felt were 48 hour days, but he survived four of them before his surroundings began to concern him.

First, he saw an island, not a hundred yards from the ship. It was green and lush and mountainous, with misty clouds hanging around its rocky peaks. It stood there real as anything. For a moment he could taste the foliage, hear the wildlife inside its forest. His heart leapt into his throat and tiny beads of cold sweat escaped from his arms and back. Then he blinked, and it was gone. Then there was just ocean, vast and uncaring. There was hardly even a void in its place. The island had never existed. Only the cruel wyld. He fell to his knees and wept, sobbing loudly, knowing there was no one around to hear. After that, more land appeared on occasion, as often as once a day. Sometimes it was close, sometimes at a distance, and most disappeared after a while. But Aft decided the ones that didn't weren't worth the thought anyways.

And as days went on, they grew shorter. After around twelve days of his personal sleeping cycle, the world had returned to 24 hours. He might have hoped he was returning to civilization and the world of men, if it weren't for the monsters that began to appear in addition to the land. On his eighth day alone, he saw a fin, wide as a sail with a sharp bone running through it, rise out of the ocean in the distance and then submerge. On the eleventh day he saw a terrible writhing mass of tentacles and twitching appendages floating alongside the ship. It was the size of a rowboat, and smelled like rotten fish, a sight which made him retch. On day sixteen, he saw a mountainous creature in the distance. It stood almost to the clouds, and walked on two wide, layered legs. Its head was long and snakelike, and appeared to be searching the ocean below it for food.

Then on the twenty second day he looked over the ship and saw, just below the surface, fire. It was a red flame that almost looked green through the water, and it snaked around translucently below the surface. For a time he watched, transfixed, when suddenly a scaled serpent as thick as a pine shot up from the water, engulfed in flames and screeching like a cat. Warm water spilled onto the deck with such force that it knocked Aft onto his side. He scrambled towards the stairs in an instinctual panic, but not before a beak, similar to a parrot's, but the size of a large house, erupted from the water and snapped the serpent from the air, dragging it under. The wave pushed the ship up and to the side, and almost washed Aft overboard, had he not caught onto the banister of the quarter deck. After he dried himself off, he decided it would be best if he stayed in the hold.

From then on he only journeyed outside to collect rainwater. And when he did, he averted his eyes to the horrors occurring around him. He caught glimpses of fish flying through the air and seas of blood and bubbling ink and churning rocks, but he focused on the ship. Sometimes it wasn't even rain falling, but some strange slippery viscous liquid, which he didn't try to eat. He would count the wood grain as he moved along the deck, if necessary. But even what he saw from the corners of his eyes gave him nightmares. The noises too, were other worldly and disturbing. Humanoid groaning and guttural calls, high pitched airy metallic ringing, and deep, distant resonating all composed the cacophony that sounded even throughout the night, which eventually drove him to cover cloth in candlewax, and plug them into his ears.

Weeks were spent in the dimly lit cabins, with the faint hint of noises outside, as the boat rocked back and forth in the wyld sea. His beard grew long and his limbs started to waste away from neglect, dragging his posture to the ground. He was depressed, and losing hope with each day. He knew this was no life he wished to lead, but he would not allow himself to be taken by the madness. He was master of himself, and the interior of the ship. That was, until, the blight came. One morning he awoke to find the remainder of his food rotten. It had almost melted, forming sticky green piles of putrid slime. All that was left was the cider. And for several days he drank the cider, until he was too weak to move from the room where it was kept. The air was warm and stuffy. His vision was clouded from malnutrition and his time in the dark. He knew there was no point in drinking anymore, but he continued to hold on, refusing to let the universe take him until there was absolutely nothing he could do.

After sixtyfour days at sea, the ship stopped. Aft woke up after what felt like days of sleeping to a sickeningly sweet aroma that smelled faintly of strawberries. The scent gave him the energy he needed to move again, so still in a haze, he decided to investigate. He pushed himself up from the bed, shuffled weakly up the stairs and onto the deck, and beheld the blue ocean, stretching endlessly outwards to either side of him. It was early in the morning, but the light from the teal sky and glistening ocean still burned his eyes. In front of him was a towering red mass of writhing tentacles and gnashing mouths. It frightened him at first, but the nightmarish horror was almost expected. He couldn't understand the sounds it made. It resembled laughing and groaning at the same time, but distinctly inhuman. The creature wavered back and forth, and the ship moved with it. He realized then that the vessel was sitting slightly above the water, and must have been held up by some appendage of the monster's. As Aft's eyes adjusted, the creature bent itself over, bringing the erratic mass of twisting limbs and twitching mouths over the deck. A smile forced its way across his face. Finally his suffering was over, and he could die.

He bent his aching knees down and picked up the same harpoon he used to kill Zed. The shaft was almost rotted from neglect, but the iron was still strong. And though could barely clasp it, using all the strength left in his body, he hefted it over his shoulder, and prepared the throw. This was to be his final action. Suddenly, a blinding light filled the air, and he was struck by an intense heat. An energy filled his body, which stopped his heart and violently tore at his limbs. For a split second there was excruciating pain, caused by what felt like his body destroying itself underneath his skin. He choked and shook his head to free himself of whatever this was, and when he gained his sight back he saw the world wavering in a tint of yellow and orange. He inspected his person, now naked, but covered in roaring flames. Underneath the flames his body was whole again, lean and strong, and upright. The harpoon glowed red from the heat. Securing his stance in the charred deck, he reeled the weapon back again, and with godlike strength, launched it through the monster, sending the harpoon flying into the air on the other side. The beast fell forward, crushing the ship, but Aft leapt clear from his position, into the ocean some distance away.

He quickly sank in the water, but was fast enough to tread water. He looked behind him, at the remains of the beast and the now-destroyed ship, then at the dawning sun on the horizon. He swam east.


End file.
